1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of baking. More specifically, the invention comprises a method for making a composition for releasing baked products from baking pans, along with the composition made by the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Industrial baking operations involve the repeated use of a set of baking pans. These pans may go through many baking cycles per day. Release agents have been used for many years to enable the easy extraction of the bread from the pans.
Baking release agents must be safe for human consumption, since some of the agent will inevitably be present in the food being baked. Thus, many prior art release agents have used edible oils. Edible oils, typically vegetable oils, have been used in this role for many years. Examples are soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, olive oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, cottonseed oil, and palm oil. Glycerides, as well as other animal fat derivatives, are often included.
The edible oil is generally mixed with water prior to spraying or painting the composition onto the baking pans. A typical composition includes (by volume) about 30% edible oil and about 3% emulsifiers, with the balance being water. These components are typically mixed under ambient conditions (about 25 degrees Celsius). However, under some circumstances they may be mixed at mildly elevated temperatures of approximately 60 degrees Celsius.
The percentages vary according to market requirements and desired shelf life. The prior art formulations have limited stability, meaning that the oil and water will separate over time. They are referred to as an “emulsion,” but are in reality more accurately deemed a water-in-oil suspension. The stability of the suspension is limited. Thus, the selection of the percentages may depend in part on how long the product must be stored prior to use.
The selection of the appropriate edible oil is driven in part by market forces, including local availability. Well-refined cotton seed oil is cleaner burning than badly refined sunflower oil, but the price difference may nevertheless favor the sunflower oil.
Mixing in more water increases the viscosity of the prior art formulations, but not the stability. Adequate stability can be achieved by adding the correct type and percentage of emulsifier. However, a certain amount of stability is gained past a certain concentration point due to the viscosity itself, as the molecules that are not linked by the emulsifier cannot float apart.
A highly viscous product eventually becomes too thick to spray. It can be thinned of course, but adding more water will eventually result in far too few links between the molecules and the viscosity will actually decrease, resulting in a low viscosity product with no stability and extremely poor release properties. Once the initial mixing is complete, it is very difficult to add more water to the prior art formulations.
Thus, the baking release agent is typically manufactured in the form in which it will ultimately be applied to the baking pans. The release agent is not made as a “concentrate” designed to be diluted prior to use. The prior art formulations contain about ⅔ water by volume. A purchaser buying such products is paying to transport a large volume (and weight) of water. A large portion of the storage volume is obviously also consumed by the water. It would be desirable to provide a release agent which could be “cut” with water in the bakery just prior to its use. This would result in a substantial reduction in transportation and storage costs.
There is a second inherent problem in the prior art formulations. All the organic oils discussed (cotton seed oil, sunflower oil, etc.) contain a significant amount of carbon. Residual carbon tends to accumulate on the pans over the baking cycles. Vegetable oils undergo significant oxidation and solid deposition at around 180 degrees Celsius. The average baking oven temperature is around 250 degrees Celsius. Thus, carbon fouling is a given in current baking operations.
This carbon fouling becomes a significant problem, as it is quite difficult to remove. Anyone who has cleaned a household bread baking pan is familiar with the problem of carbon deposits. They must often be scraped off in a very laborious fashion.
One solution is simply to discard a set of pans once the carbon deposition becomes significant. As several hundred or several thousand pans may comprise the set, this solution is unsatisfactory. A second solution is to pull the pans out of service and clean them. This option often requires the use of toxic chemicals, such as carbon tetrachloride. Such cleaning operations must generally be conducted in a separate facility equipped to handle such chemicals. Thus, the pan set must be shipped away and taken out of service for days if not weeks. This fact necessitates the use of two or three pan sets for a single baking line. The use of carbon-depositing pan release agents is therefore problematic.
The present invention seeks to address these concerns with the prior art formulations by providing a release agent which (1) can be diluted with additional water just prior to its use; and (2) significantly reduces deposits on the baking pans.